A tunnel is an underground passageway, completely enclosed except for openings for ingress and egress, commonly at each end.
A tunnel may be for foot or vehicular road traffic, for rail traffic, or for a canal. Some tunnels are aqueducts to supply water for consumption or for hydroelectric stations or are sewers. Other uses include routing power or telecommunication cables, some are to permit wildlife such as European badgers to cross highways. Secret tunnels have given entrance to or escape from an area, such as the Cu Chi Tunnels or the smuggling tunnels in the Gaza Strip which connect it to Egypt. Some tunnels are not for transport at all but rather, are fortifications, for example Mittelwerk and Cheyenne Mountain.
In the United Kingdom, a pedestrian tunnel or other underpass beneath a road is called an underpass subway. In the United States that term now means an underground rapid transit system.
The central part of a rapid transit network is usually built in tunnels. Rail station platforms may be connected by pedestrian tunnels or by foot bridges.
Read more about Tunnel: Usage Limitations, Geotechnical Investigation, Construction, Natural Tunnels, Temporary Way, Enlargement, Floor Lowering, Accidents
Other articles related to "tunnel, tunnels":
... On 10 March 1945, 70 prisoners escaped from Island Farm through a tunnel dug from Hut Nine (the only hut now left standing) ... The tunnel was about 70 feet (21 m) long and breached the perimeter fence ... Excavating the tunnels was not easy because of the heavy clay soil upon which the camp was built ...
... The New York Tunnel Extension (also New York Improvement and Tunnel Extension), was a major project of the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) at the beginning of the 20th century, to improve railroad access ... The project comprised tunnels and approaches from New Jersey and Long Island to Midtown Manhattan, leading to the PRR's massive new station, New York Penn Station ...
... In some downtown tunnels, cartoons depicting an advertiser's product were inscribed on the walls of the tunnel at the level of the cars' windows ... Today known as "tunnel movies" or "tunnel advertising", they have been installed in many cities' subways around the world in recent years, for example ...
... With deaths occurring at such a high rate, the tunnel took on another use, and when patients died, the bodies were placed on the cart and lowered to the bottom ...
... Clayton Tunnel rail crash - 1861 - confusion about block signals Balvano train disaster - 1944 - 1996 Channel Tunnel fire - 1996 ...
Famous quotes containing the word tunnel:
“You may raise enough money to tunnel a mountain, but you cannot raise money enough to hire a man who is minding his own business.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“It is the light
At the end of the tunnel as it might be seen
By him looking out somberly at the shower,
The picture of hope a dying man might turn away from,
Realizing that hope is something else, something concrete
You can’t have.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“The only way to find out anything about what kinds of lives people led in any given period is to tunnel into their records and to let them speak for themselves.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)